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PRB_Ohio writes "The sun is in the middle of a century long solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.
The gist is that there is a 'jet stream' like phenomenon about 7,000km below the surface of the sun. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.
Scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to track and analyze the streams."

Hey, it's me again. It's been a year and a half(Jan 2008) since you first told me that this planet you speak of would kill us within 6-12 months but we're not dead yet. No astronomers have mentioned its existence so is it invisible as well? You told me that there'd be all sorts of panic about this thing by now but the only person I can find mentioning this BS is you. Care to explain? I'm all ears, and I have a telescope handy so if you want to tell me where I'm supposed to be looking, I'll be happy to prove

Well, given that the minimum started a few years ago and the earth has been on a cooling trend for the past few years, ending a period of high solar activity in which we were on a warming trend, it would be quite a coincidence that the warming trend happened to end just when the sun had a drastic decrease in solar activity.

2008 was still the 10th warmest year on record, 2007 the second warmest. Even discounting the varying solar activity, there is still a strong underlying warming trend, and it's a big worry that the temperatures around the poles have increased so much.

We've got so many sources of historical temperature data that even if one source is unreliable, you've got access to so many others.

Every tree, every sedimentary rock, every body of water with sediment at the bottom, every ice formation, has information on the historical temperatures in that region. You've also got many human temperature readings from a variety of sources.

When you have that much data, it's not hard to build up an accurate estimate of the historical temperature.

I agree so much...it hurts....!Not only if something like an asteroid was coming to Earth would the world not know about it because the gov. would not want to cause panic...so too about the earth going into a disaster like an ice age in the next year...or say the sun exploding etc...etc..

I for long always thought there was a 3rd axle we did not see or think about in terms of orbit, thereby affecting our climate and atmosphere, much like a coin being put on its side on a coffee table and spun, at some momen

I heard on the news today that the Australian Weather Service decided to stop calling it a drought because using the word drought implies it will end at some point and they don't see this ending anytime soon.

What everybody fails to mention about Climate, is that 99% of it is caused by the Sun

That's an interesting way of looking at it.

Of course, you should also consider that Earth's biosphere is essentially a planet sized solar collector. Plants trap the sunlight and store it as high energy compounds. Then animals come along ad turn the plants' trapped energy into more concentrated forms, like fats. Even when the organism dies, the stored energy remains. Eventually, if given long enough it turns into fossil fuels. Six hundred million years of dinosaur blubber gave us our oil reserves. Lord knows how many years of dead trees went to make our coal.

We actually have a miniscule affect on climate

Well, that all depends on what we do, doesn't it? I mean, if we built a giant magnifying glass in space so Earth got five times more solar radiation, that would have an effect. If we launched
solar reflectors into orbit so 50% of the sunlight falling on the planet was reflected away, that would have an effect too. Granted, it would be the Sun causing the effect. But it would also be us, yeah?

And to my way of thinking, if we take 600 million years of trapped solar radiation and release most of it over a paltry couple of centuries...
well, I reckon that would have an effect too.

If the Sun died out, it would have such a huge magnitude more effect on Earth than a big magnifying glass. For that reason, it is tough to argue that the Sun doesn't have more than a 99% effect on our climate.

And to my way of thinking, if we take 600 million years of trapped solar radiation and release most of it over a paltry couple of centuries... well, I reckon that would have an effect too.

That's not really what it's about. The waste heat from our industries isn't heating the Earth significantly; according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] the total world electricity generation is 6.3*10**19 J. The total energy input from the Sun is 1.5*10**22 J. All our industries add up to about half of a percent of the Earth's heat budget.

"that at least some climate activity isn't and can't be affected by humans"

Been reading Andrew Bolt's fact free opinion columns have we? Nobody who has read the IPCC reports could possibly belive that scientists dispute the existance of natural variations but plenty of politically motivated, anti-science trolls have claimed EVERYTHING can be explained by natural variation. Not the least amoung these lying hypocrites is the coal industry's pet senator Barnaby Joyce [news.com.au].

Those natuaral variations include solar flux but not susnspots, the reason being is that there is not a scrap of hard evidence [iop.org] that sunspots affect Earth's climate but there is plenty of evidence they affect book sales [physicsworld.com].

This is old news. Its been known for a few years now that the solar conveyor belt has slowed. The question is how long solar activity will remain weak.

During the Maunder minimum it remained weak from about 1645 to 1710. Other minimums also occurred over a fairly long duration. During these minimums the earth tends to be quite cold. Read the wikipedia article on the maunder minimum and related minimums.

Thing is we may face many decades of reduced agricultural output at a time when we have many mouths to feed.

Its too early to tell yet, but cycle #24 is over 2 years late and cycle #25 is expected to be weak as well. So we could be looking at 22+ years of cold cold weather.

Well maybe you missed the memo, but the problem is not "Global Warming" anymore, it's "Climate Change".
Of course, what you fail to notice is that memo suggesting the phrase "climate change" was on a list of suggested Republican talking points written by pollster Frank Luntz, as an attempt to soften the language of the ACTUAL PROBLEM so that stupid people would think that it wasn't a problem. And here you go using it against the opposition, as if he were the one with the language problem.

The problem is, and always has been, distribution.
And encroachment onto arable land. And erosion. And leaching of overused fertilizers and pesticides into the ground water. Oh, and the depletion of ground water. Not to mention the strain on infrastructure due to the tripling of the population.

But at least the last one will increase the odds of a good pandemic to cull the herd. Thanks, Malthus!

This week is the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division, which explains the timing of the press release.

There have been a number of talks regarding the long solar minimum, and although I've been avoiding most of the oral sessions, there was one by Frank Hill (another NSO person) yesterday showing that um... okay, I can't remember what the axii on the graphs were, but that the general activity below the 'surface' of the sun was showing a more gradual ramp up than the last solar minimum, but we're roughly at the same level of activity as when we started cycle 23.

(disclaimer -- I'm not a solar physicist, but I am an affiliate SPD member... I'd link to the abstract, but the system won't give me a useful URL)

So solar output was correlated with sunspots. Now it is also correlated with a subsurface current. A step forward, but it is a bit premature to use the word "explain."

On a different not, how depressing that I have been pushed into resenting several forms of science. When I saw the headline, my first thought was, "Crap. More data to cherry pick to justify central control over individuals." And I say this as someone who has actually published in peer reviewed journals. Gloom.

Now I could be wrong (seriously, I really don't know all that much about this), but I thought that "respectable" journals had peers to whom they send articles for review prior to publishing? So after publishing, certainly more peers get a chance to look over the results and the process continues.But assuming that I'm correct, wouldn't that make submitting or maybe the assignment of the reviewers the first step?

i know the upper part of the HF spectrum has been acting like the next solar cycle has already started, the DX/Skip has been incredibly good and dependable and any HF enthusiast knows that by now if they have a HF rig handy.

Depends on what you call incredibly good. I have been hearing allot of strong E layer contacts which happens in the northern latitudes this time of year. Not allot of F layer contacts. F layer is considerably higher in altitude allowing for long distance HF communication.

During the middle of cycle 23, I worked Tokyo, Germany, the Red Sea, and Brazil, all from my car in Ohio. I heard Australia, but just could not work them.

You and the other commenter completely confused me, but it sounds neat (I do realize it has to with radio communication). Would you mind giving me some URLs to check out more about what you are talking about?

Of course, the fact that we have the worst global recession in 70 years at the same time as a low in sunspot activity is Entirely Coincidental. Seriously, I haven't studied this in depth, so I don't really know, but it sure seems suspicious, and it's certainly been proposed in the past that the sunspot cycle affected the economy.